Meet Vouchify: The new app that can help your business grow

Growing a service-based business can be challenging, especially when it comes to promoting your business online. Business owners are expected be able to expertly navigate the complicated world of digital marketing and social media in order to stay ahead of their competition and grow their customer base.

However, even in this new-fangled digital age, one of the oldest methods of attracting new customers remains the most effective … word-of-mouth recommendations. Research shows that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising [Nielson]. Despite the power of word-of-mouth recommendations, many service-based businesses leave them to chance.

Step in Vouchify – the new app that is revolutionising word-of-mouth recommendations. Vouchify makes it quick and easy for people to recommend their favourite local businesses to friends, and to find great nearby businesses that their Facebook or phone contact friends have already recommended.

For business owners, whether you are a Pilates instructor, a kids swimming coach, a hairdresser, a gardener or a dog walker, Vouchify is a great way for your business to tap into personal word-of-mouth recommendations and grow.

Benefits of using Vouchify for your business

1. Allows you to proactively request recommendations
Vouchify makes it easy for businesses to ask their customers to recommend (or “Vouch” for) them to friends. With one click, customers are sent a recommendation request via SMS or email and if the customer wants to recommend the business, they can do so in less than a minute and with no need to sign-up or download the app. Customers can choose if they want to share their recommendation with friends immediately via Facebook. Recommendations are saved in Vouchify so that they are immediately available to friends when they are in need of a good trusted business.

2. Personal recommendations are more effective
Vouchify enables consumers to find nearby businesses that have been personally recommended by people they know and trust, making Vouchify recommendations more likely to convert into solid business referrals. This solves the main problems with traditional review sites where consumers are relying on reviews and average rating scores posted by strangers, with no way of knowing if they share their tastes and standards or whether they are genuine.

3. It’s safe – positive recommendations from real customers only
Vouchify is not a place where people rate and review every experience they have with a service provider whether good, bad or mediocre. Vouchify is a place where friends only share the businesses that they truly love. Because Vouchify only contains positive recommendations from real people, businesses don’t need to worry about undeserved negative reviews, including reviews from people who may not have actually used their service.

4. Compliments existing digital presence.
All businesses on Vouchify are provided with their own profile page. This allows customers to find out more about the business and to contact the business directly via phone or email. Businesses are able to tailor their profile page, including uploading their logo and any business images, adding content to their About section, as well as adding their contact details. If businesses have their own websites, or any other social media sites, they can link to them directly from their Vouchify profile to make it easy for customers to find them.

5. Business reports
Vouchify includes a business reporting section which allows businesses to track business results from the use of the platform, including visitors to their profile page, customer shares on Facebook as well as number of customers who have contacted them via email / phone via the app.

Vouchify is in early release and is free for businesses to use for the rest of 2016 while we focus on building up the number of great businesses and recommendations on the platform.